With About $19 Billion Valuation, Snapchat To Become Third Most Valued Startup

Snapchat, the service that lets you send self-destructing text and picture messages is going places. In the latest round of funding, the company seems positive to raise its valuation to $16-19 billion. With this funding round, the company will become the third most valued startup after Xiaomi and Uber.

Last year, Snapchat raised $485 Million and was then valued at $10 Billion. This time around the company is targeting $500 million and is expected to be valued between $16-19 Billion. The company will over all raise $1 Billion after proposed funding.

Snapchat needs the funding as it plans to purchase the recording label Big Machine. This purchase is expected to cost Snapdeal a massive sum of $350 million. To raise its funds further, the company has said that it will be introducing ads on the platform.

Snapchat has been gaining popularity and is said to have acquired up to 200 Million monthly active users. For comparison, Instagram has over 300 Million subscribers while Whatsapp, the most popular of the messaging app has a user base of over 700 million.